Resources

I thought it would be helpful to create a resource page that visitors to my site can use to see the products and services that I use with my blog. The list will be continually evolving as I find different resources that are worth mentioning.

Disclaimer: Please note that some of the links below are affiliate links and I will earn a commission if you purchase through those links. I use all of the products listed below and recommend them because they are companies that I have found helpful and trustworthy. Please let me know if you have any questions about anything listed below!

Some of My Favorite Products

The Simple Roots Wellness Store contains an affiliate store through Amazon with some of my favorite products from cooking supplies and utensils to the best food and cooking products I use every day. Take a look around and shop through an entire Alexa-approved store. The prices on Amazon are the same to you, but purchasing through me helps to support the free content I put on this site.

Well Labs is a supplement company on a mission to give underprivileged children access to lifestyle medicine. As you purchase products, they give back. They also give YOU the highest quality nutritional goods, and make health easy and practical, all at the same time! All of their supplements are physician-grade and are of the highest possible quality, giving you the peace of mind that you can give back while getting healthier. Just like here are SRW, they want health and nutrition to be easy and convenient. With your help, they are giving back, because the world is a better place when positive vibes and warm fuzzy feelings abound. Click here to learn more.

Thrive Market is the first socially conscious online store offering the world’s best-selling natural and organic products at wholesale prices. They carry over 2,500 of the highest quality food, supplements, home, personal care, and beauty products from over 400 of the best brands on the market, all delivered straight to your door at 25-50% off retail prices. Their mission is to make health living easy, affordable, and accessible for every American family. You can sign up today and get 15% off your first order and a 30 day free trial membership. Then your membership is only $59.95 per year. Click here to get started

Nick’s Sticks are made with the Midwest’s finest grass-fed beef or free-range turkey, raised just a few miles from my house. Nick has a farming and culinary background and has combined these fresh meats with organic seasoned salt and other natural seasonings to bring you and your family one of the cleanest snacks you can find. Nick works directly with each step in the process to ensure that you are only getting the best product!

Upgraded Self’s mission is to help people perform better, think faster, and live better using a proven blend of ancient knowledge and brand new technologies, tempered by research, science, and measured results from customers, top athletes, and medical professionals. You can expect to feel the difference in how you perform with the combination of supplements, enhancing your body, mind, and nervous system to work together effortlessly to help you perform at levels beyond what you’d expect.

Cosmetics are one of our biggest offenders when it comes to the toxins we put on our body. The reality, our cosmetics are cocktails of industrially produced and potentially dangerous chemicals that are damaging our health and in some cases rather than delivering on the promise of “anti-aging” are actually speeding up the process of aging. This is why you need to really consider what brand you are using and make sure they only use the best ingredients. This is why I highly recommend the Beautycounter brand as my go-to for cosmetics.

30 Day Guide To Paleo ebook is an absolutely fool-proof guide for anyone that wishes to give the Paleo Diet an honest shot for 30 days. Put together by the team at Primal Palate, this eBook gives you two 30 day meal plans, 180+ recipes, a Paleo Tips and Tricks guide, 60 days of exclusive emails and access to Paleo forums and an online Facebook support group. Take this 30 day challenge in living the Paleo lifestyle for just $24 and start to see the health benefits.

Vitamix blenders help you to create every course of your home-cooked meal—from frozen drinks to creamy desserts—in minutes. The Vitamix 5200 that I own is my most universal tool for family meals and entertaining. You will find that nothing compares to the power and ease of use as a Vitamix. It is a great investment towards a healthy life full of great food.

Honeyville Almond Flour is the gold standard in the gluten-free industry and is the only almond flour I use. They blanch and pasteurize their California Almonds using a hot water bath so you get California Almonds milled to perfection with no chemicals, no additives, and no fillers. When you are looking for almond flour, Honeyville is the ONLY way to go! This flour will store for up to 9 months in a sealed package so we purchase the 25lb box to get the best value for our money.

Fitbit helps you turn fitness into a lifestyle. During the day, it tracks your steps, distance, calories burned, and stairs climbed. Come nightfall, it measures your sleep quality, helps you learn how to sleep better, and wakes you in the morning. Your Fitbit also motivates you to reach your goals by bringing greater fitness into your life – seamlessly, socially, 24 hours a day. Get a Fitbit and join in on making exercise a part of your daily routine!

Getting Started With Your Own Food Blog

MediaTemple is the hosting company we use through Host Iowa. My husband was introduced to them through a coworker and they helped set up everything for us, including purchasing our domain, setting up email addresses and installing wordpress on our domain. They made it extremely easy to get up and going. The great thing about our hosting plan is that it allows for unlimited bandwidth so you don’t have to worry about slow page loads when you get big spikes in traffic.

Food Blogger Pro has been the most essential tool for me starting my blog. There are two primary parts of site, video training and the community forum. The videos helped me with everything from step-by-step instructions to set up my site, or use the manual settings on my DSLR camera. The community forum is a place where you can go to get questions answered by other food bloggers and is awesome to have such a diverse group of food bloggers to answer any question you may have.

Mailchimp is the email marketing software we use to distribute our new posts as well as my eCourse content. I also use this in my nutrition counseling business to promote my services, classes and send out a periodic newsletter. As a blogger and business owner it’s important to connect with your readers through all different avenues, including email, and Mailchimp makes it really easy.

Bloglovin is my favorite way to keep up with other blogs I like to follow. You get a daily recap of the posts from other blogs that you follow and can pick which ones you want to look at closer. This saves me a ton of time and email space not having to subscribe to so many individual blogs. This also allows you to discover what’s popular in fashion, beauty, interior design, food & more and to find new interesting blogs or simply stay up to date with what’s hot right now.

Driving Traffic to Your Food Blog

Here is a list of the food photo submission sites that I use. There are SO many out there, but the ones listed here are just the ones that I submit to. It can take some time to go through the process of entering a submission, but the traffic you gain from getting a submission accepted can be great! Having your recipes on these sites also increases the awareness of your site and helps to get more people to to share your recipes and pictures on Pinterest or other social media.

Tasty Food Photography – Food photography makes all the difference in impact of your blog. I’ve learned a lot of things as I have started up this blog. One of the best resources I have found to help explain the specifics of food photography is this Tasty Food Photography eBook by Lindsay from Pinch of Yum. As she states “My hope is that the tips and tricks I write about in this book will be practical, easy to read, and will ultimately help you take food photos that make people say, ‘I am dying to eat that right now!'”

Pinterest For Food Bloggers – It appears that Pinterest is here to stay, and increasingly plays a huge role in driving traffic to blogs. I have come to realize that it can be an integral part of my business. This eBook is aimed specifically at food bloggers who are looking to grow their audience. You might have the best site in the world, but if nobody knows about it, how will they find you? You need to get yourself out there, and growing a Pinterest following is a great way to do it.

Monetizing Your Food Blog

We’ve learned a lot about turning SRW into a full time business since we launched in 2014. Below are some of the resources and programs that we’ve been involved in and recommend.

Monetizing Your Food Blog – At some point, you might start considering monetizing your blog. Yep, that’s right! You can make money blogging. This eBook has been a great resource for me and will teach you everything you need to know, from ads to affiliate marketing to sponsored posts to creating your own product! If you are serious about monetizing your blog, this is a great resource to get started.

Fitfluential – is a nationwide network of highly influential fitness and nutrition enthusiasts sharing their journey both online and offline through multiple social media platforms. FitFluential Ambassadors and Influencers reach more than 100 million people each month. In just over a year, FitFluential has grown to 10,000 members with nearly 800 Ambassadors. These influencers have spent time and effort in creating unique and compelling content that draws in an engaged audience. That audience’s loyalty is valuable. Our goal is to bring them in to opportunities where they can earn additional income for their efforts.

Share-a-Sale is strictly an affiliate marketing company. They basically allow you to connect with various retailers to help you promote their products in return for a commission. There is a wide range of retailers that you can partner with from clothing to food products and everything in between. This is one of the fastest and easiest ways to add text links in blog posts, social media or emails for promoting products in return for a commission.